


An Introduction to the Outer Child

by Dooiney_Oie



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Aka my most self indulgent piece of fanfiction yet, F/F, Gen, Other, Pleeaaasee check those warnings if you think you'll need them there are a fair few of them, THIS IS SO MANY WORDS LMAO, Vespa Ilkay and Peter Nureyev’s very special bottle episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:01:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28032819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dooiney_Oie/pseuds/Dooiney_Oie
Summary: The two of them must have huddled together as the room filled up, instead of doing the smart thing and trying to find a way out. Vespa had held her emergency air filter firmly over her face and walked over to prod the pile of worn trenchcoat and slacks on the floor with her boot, only to feel something solid inside.Carefully, she'd leaned down to get a better look. And what she'd found, to her complete disbelief, was a kid. A very unconscious kid that looked an awful lot like her pain-in-the-ass crewmate Juno Steel.-Or, Nureyev and Juno get given the "macguffin-ed into kids" treatment and everyone has to deal with that, but especially one very tired Vespa Ilkay.
Relationships: Background Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay, Vespa Ilkay & Peter Nureyev, background Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 33
Kudos: 215





	An Introduction to the Outer Child

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO AND WELCOME TO THE MOST SELF INDULGENT THING I'VE EVER WRITTEN
> 
> Thing 1: The premise for this makes absolutely no sense, like biologically or otherwise. Ignore that. It doesn't matter. Shh. Play in this space with me instead
> 
> Thing 2: Warnings! I will put these in the end notes, please check them if you think you may need them, but up front the big ones are canon-typical internalised ableism, children in dangerous situations, and references to past child abuse, neglect, homelessness & sibling death. Despite this, I hope the overall tone is mostly lighthearted!
> 
> BIG THANK YOU TO JAY ONETIREDBOY AND DANNY GOINGHOST FOR BETA-ING THIS FOR ME. I OWE YOU BIG TIME, LY
> 
> ALSO BIG TY TO THE TPP 21+ SERVER FOR ENABLING ME CAUSE I PROBABLY WOULDN'T HAVE ACTUALLY WRITTEN THIS IF THEY HADN'T ENCOURAGED IT
> 
> Enjoy! o:

It was supposed to be a simple goddamn mission.

It's _always_ supposed to be a simple goddamn mission. And honestly, it probably would have been - hell, they _all_ probably would have been - except for the fact that as well as her wonderful, beautiful, wildly intelligent girlfriend, and her girlfriend's very competent best friend, Vespa works with a bunch of _idiots_ who might as well be wearing giant squeaky red shoes for the amount they act like a troupe of goddamn _clowns_.

It _should've_ been a straight shot in and out; get the hacker into the shielded server room, get the data they needed, destroy the original copies, and get everyone back to the ship. 

Steel didn't even need to _be_ there, but he'd _insisted_. If _Rita_ is in danger, then he wants to be there too, as if the two of them need to hold hands every step of the world's most straightforward mission and Vespa and Siquliak couldn't have handled the whole thing by themselves.

Her and Siquliak... and _Ransom_. Would have been easier _without_ him, at least then she wouldn't have to divide her attention between herding the hacker and trying to keep an eye on him the whole time, but Buddy said his skills would be useful, and Buddy knows what she's talking about, even if Vespa doesn't see the same gears and cogs that she does. So she conceded to having Ransom there, _and_ she conceded to having Steel there, too, which she now hugely regrets because those two are the entire reason they've ended up in this whole big ridiculous mess.

Because _Steel_ is _impatient_ and does this _thing_ where he likes to just _waltz on in_ to _uncharted rooms_ without even doing a _cursory_ check for traps, or guards, or any of the thousands of things that Vespa can always see lurking behind a closed door. And Ransom is usually more sensible, except all of that sense goes right out of the airlock when Steel is involved, so while Vespa is surprised when he throws himself into the room ahead in the half-second between Steel setting off the alarm and the door slamming shut behind him, she isn't all _that_ surprised.

"The hell did you do that for?! Now we're _both_ stuck in here!" Steel had shouted, for once echoing Vespa's own thoughts in near perfect synchronicity. Ransom had mumbled something about locked doors and being on the wrong side of them, or something like that, but it was hard to make out over the alarm sounds and the hacker wailing and screaming… and also the sudden hiss of gas being released into the now-sealed room where the two of them had gotten themselves trapped.

Thankfully, Siquliak had kept his head through all of the coughing and shouting, and while Vespa was still trying to sift through which parts of the scene were real and which were bonus nasties thrown in by her stressed-out brain, he'd pointed the hacker at the door. The thing was open and spilling thick fog out into their chamber in less than a minute, but the stuff didn't smell like any kind of poison or sedative Vespa recognised. That in itself set off some alarm bells of her own, especially when the gas started to clear and neither Steel nor Ransom were anywhere to be seen.

Just a single pile of tangled clothes on the floor - the two of them must have huddled together as the room filled up, instead of doing the smart thing and trying to find a way out. The hacker's voice had somehow gotten even _more_ shrill as she wailed about _incorporeal gas monsters_ and _how are they gonna kiss if they don't have_ _mouths_ , but Vespa hadn't been listening too closely. Instead, she'd held her emergency air filter firmly over her face (always pays to be prepared) and walked over to prod the pile of worn trenchcoat and slacks on the floor with her boot, only to feel something solid inside.

Carefully, she'd leaned down to get a better look. And what she'd found, to her complete disbelief, was a _kid_. A very unconscious kid that looked an awful lot like her pain-in-the-ass crewmate Juno Steel.

"Uh, Siquliak?" she'd asked, pulling her mask away from her face and gesturing him inside as the gas finished dissipating - although _apparently_ it wasn't even lethal to begin with. She'd hoped he'd understand the unspoken question she was asking by calling him over, the question of ' _is this for real?'_ that she hates to admit to needing, but she hadn't gotten the chance to hear it from him before the hacker bounded up behind him and _squealed_.

"Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my _gosh_ he's so _cute!_ Just look at his little cheeks and his little _hands_ and oh my gosh _is that Mistah Ransom!?_ They're both so _tiny_ I just wanna _squeeze_ 'em _oh my god Mistah Jet do you think there's more what if I set the gas off again and then we can all get shrinkified and turn into cute little babies--"_

"That sounds like an extremely unwise plan," Siquliak had said, scooping up a kid in each arm and making for the door. "Though a sample of the gas could be useful, this mission has been compromised. We will not be able to protect Juno, Ransom, and likely ourselves if we continue, and so we should turn back before security arrives to attend to the alarm we triggered."

"The alarm _they_ triggered," Vespa had grumbled, but she didn't disagree with the rest of it. The job was a bust - no chance of getting the rest of the way in and back out again with two unconscious kids _and_ the hacker, who might as well be a third, with the alarm still going off.

So they made a quick exit, and then Siquliak and the hacker made a quicker trip to a nearby satellite to pick up some clothes that would fit their newly miniaturised crewmates while Vespa ran some checks on their vitals and tried to see what she could figure out about whatever the hell this was.

"It doesn't make any _sense_ , Bud," she sighs into the sheets of their shared bed in their shared room hours later - just about the only place on this ship she ever feels halfway safe. "I've got a few more tests running, but it looks like a full-body kinda - kinda _reversal_ , I don't know how that's even _possible_."

The Steel she knows and dislikes is soft and broad all over, yet the kid on the cot in the medbay is borderline malnourished, and that's to say nothing about Ransom. _He_ looks all but starved, bones pushing on skin in all the wrong places and probably about half the weight he should be. Both around ten years old, give or take a couple of years with Ransom being slightly younger, and for some reason Steel's right eye socket is still empty, even though the scarring around it is all gone - no signs of any injury to it at all, despite a few fresh bruises faintly visible on his arms, scrapes all over his knees and his lip being split open, but half-healed.

She'd put the both of them on an IV each, kicked everyone else out of the medbay and started running test after test, only recently retreating to hers and Buddy's room to rest for a bit, try to stop her vision flickering at the edges and throwing up shadows where there are none. She'll head back in in a minute, just... this first.

"If anyone can figure out the mystery, love, it's you," Buddy says softly, smiling as she runs a hand through Vespa's hair and trails it down her back. It feels amazing, and she melts into it with another contented sigh.

"I mean, who the hell knows what it did to their brains," she continues in a mumble, half just thinking out loud. "Or if it's permanent or not, and why the hell these people hooked it up to a _security system_ of all things - I mean, do they not know what it _does?_ "

Buddy hums, fingers working over her neck and shoulders. Every time she hits a knot Vespa feels a little more like a puddle of warmed butter. "I can see a lot of people willing to pay a lot of money for a magic potion that sets you back thirty years. Hell, I wouldn't say no to one myself."

Vespa snorts into the pillow. "Yeah. Seems kinda unfair it was the youngest two people here who got to try a sample."

She turns over to look at the ceiling. She'd only meant to take a five-minute break, but Buddy had sweet-talked her into lying down with her and five had become closer to fifteen. She should really get back to work soon, and to making sure their newly pre-pubescent crewmates stay in their beds while she figures out what the hell is going on, but...

"It's bothering you, isn't it?" Buddy says fondly, tracing a line over her shoulder.

"Yeah, it is," Vespa half-laughs.

"And you're not going to relax until you've solved it, are you?"

"Probably not."

Buddy leans over and kisses her temple, and then her nose, and then her mouth. "Go solve it, then. As long as you feel rested enough."

Vespa turns to look at her, drinking in her face like it's cold water and she's stuck in the damned desert again. She's so beautiful. "I love you, Bud."

"I love you too, darling." Buddy kisses her again, this time on the mouth for a long moment before she breaks away and rises from the bed. "I'll be through to keep you company once I've finished some work of my own."

With that reassurance, it doesn't feel like such a struggle to head back out to the medbay for just a little more work. The sooner she figures this out, the sooner they can get back to normal - or drop Steel and Ransom off at daycare while they finish the heist of the millenium.

One little problem with that, though, she finds as the door to the medbay slides open ahead of her to reveal two formerly occupied cots with nothing but mussed sheets lying on top of them.

Shit.

In the time it takes her to give the room a rapid once-over, she's already dialed Buddy's comms and been picked up. "They're gone," she says without preamble. "Not in the medbay, the clothes we got are gone too, but they can't have gone far."

At least the ship is out in open space - means they both must still be on board, seeing as their only options to get off the thing are through the loading bay, where Siquliak is tending to his car, or--

Buddy's voice comes calm and confident in her ear, pulling her forward. "What's your plan, darling?"

"We need to lock down the escape pod," she says quickly, already running out of the room. "Assuming they're making a break for it, it's the only way they could leave."

She hears the sound of Buddy's heels on the metal floors of the ship, the compressed-air whine of a door opening and closing. "I'll meet you there, love."

Buddy hangs up, and Vespa keeps running. Almost there.

She rounds the corner to see the door to the emergency pod open, and kid-Ransom frantically trying to pull kid-Steel inside while he struggles and protests. The both of them seem to have found the clothes that were left for them and changed themselves, except Ransom isn't wearing his glasses or Steel his eyepatch.

Vespa isn't sure exactly what she yells as she starts to sprint for them, but it definitely gets their attention. Seeing her, Ransom gives one last desperate tug at Steel's wrist, and then, when it proves as equally as fruitless as the others, hisses something at him and lets go, making a dash for the pod by himself. Typical Ransom, she thinks sourly, only caring about number one.

She sees Buddy arriving from the opposite direction right as she dives into the pod, Ransom hits the big red launch button, and the doors slam shut for ejection.

She goes for the controls, but mini-Ransom is standing in front of the console and had clearly looted the medbay on the way out, because that scalpel that he's brandishing at her had to have come from _somewhere._

She's about to show the asshole what a real blade looks like first-hand and up close when she catches the trembling. The kid is shaking, and looks absolutely terrified. For the love of--

She dials Buddy's comms one-handed, shoving the speaker into her ear. Buddy answers near-immediately, albeit over the sound of distinctly shrill-voiced shouting.

"Vespa - are you alright? The both of you?"

"Yeah, we're fine," Vespa growls, eyes still on Ransom. "Think it's safe to say these idiots don't remember a thing, though. Ransom's got a weapon and won't let me near the navigation."

"Yes, I was thinking much the same," Buddy replies, slightly breathless. "Our dearest Juno is giving me quite the runaround."

 _"Stop - goddamn chasing me, then, you - you creep!"_ sounds another reedy and wheezing voice in the background. _"How the - the hell do you even know my name?!"_

"Mouthy as ever," Vespa huffs.

"Well, at least he's healthy," Buddy pants, "Ah, Jet! Give me a hand, won't you?"

 _"Oh_ _hell_ _no - get your hands offa me, you big goddamn--!"_

"Darling, I'll have to call you back - you two sit tight and we'll be out to collect you as soon as--"

_"What, you want the rest of 'em?! Don't you know oldtown kids have shitty organs, assholes, you're not gonna get anything good for any of--"_

The line cuts off. Vespa heaves a sigh, and sits down cross-legged with her back against the sealed door. "Looks like it's just you and me for a while, Ransom. Just perfect."

Kid-Ransom just stares back at her, completely silent. It's fucking creepy - adult Ransom would have at least _tried_ to talk her ear off by now, even if she'd never let him.

Well, good. Nice and quiet. Buddy and Siquliak should be able to handle Steel between them, and then they'll come pick them up or get the hacker to take over the nav system, and she can get out of this death trap and back to the ship. 

She lasts five minutes before the silence, boredom, and the fact that she keeps hallucinating swarms of Hanuman burrowing spiders on the outside of the pod gets to her. The only movement Ransom has made is to crouch nervously down on the floor in front of the console, scalpel still in hand and still just _staring_ at her.

"Can you even _see?_ " she huffs at him. "I've seen your prescription. Your eyesight's a mess. I bet you can't even tell what I look like right now."

The kid just blinks back at her, lips drawn nervously together. She growls and reaches into her pocket.

"You didn't even take them with you!" she says, waving the frames in front of her. "Are you stupid, kid, or what? I feel like being able to see where you're going would be pretty useful on an escape attempt."

Ransom flinches back when she brandishes them at him, which pretty much confirms what she'd thought. She could be holding just about anything right now and all he would see was a blur.

...She sighs and slides the things over to him. It feels weird and wrong, being something like _nice_ to _Ransom_ , but this kid doesn't _feel_ like Ransom. He's too quiet, wears his expressions too openly, hasn't bothered to fix his rumpled clothes or his messy hair. He just feels like - well, like a scared kid. And Vespa might be an assassin, a thief, and a doctor with a reportedly rough bedside manner, but one thing she draws the line at, apparently, is being a dick to children.

The glasses hit Ransom's foot, and he starts, flinching. He watches her for a moment, and then pokes at them carefully for another before he finally picks them up and starts examining them with interest.

"Are you messing with me?" Vespa growls. "They go on your _face_."

He can obviously hear her. His eyes move to her when she talks, and flick around the pod following its various beeps and whirrs, but he still doesn't bother to reply. Only once he seems satisfied with his examination does he put the glasses on - they're too big for him, so he has to hold them in place as he straightens up with wide eyes, head whipping around to every corner of the shuttle, and then his own hands and feet.

Vespa doesn't know what kind of game this kid is playing, but she doesn't like it. It's not cute, and she tells him so, but by then he's noticed the windows at the front of the shuttle and has scrambled up to stare out of them with a soft gasp. She rolls her eyes.

"Yeah, yeah, they're pretty. They'd be prettier if we weren't _stuck_ out here, but you knock yourself out."

He turns back to look at her, reluctantly and with his eyes threatening to flick back to stars outside every few seconds. His expression now looks more like confusion than the fear from before. ' _What do you want from me?'_ it says, and ' _Can I trust you?'_

"What, you think _I'm_ gonna stab _you_ while your back is turned?" Vespa scoffs - almost a laugh, even. "That's goddamn rich."

Again, he just blinks at her. He keeps just _staring_ at her like that, almost like--

She groans and dials Buddy again.

"Yes, darling? Is something the matter?" Buddy answers quickly - clipped but fond, like she always sounds with Vespa when she's busy but determined to make time for her. That's soothing to her frustration, if nothing else.

"Do we have _any_ idea what goddamn planet Ransom is from?" Vespa sighs, rubbing at her forehead. "Anything?"

"I would imagine the only person on the ship privy to that information would be Juno, dear, and he's--" A crash on the other end of the line, and then a muffled voice that sounds like Siquliak doing his best to stay calm in the face of great adversity. "Well, he's not amenable right now."

"You've still not caught him?" Vespa almost laughs. "How hard can it be to take down a ten-year-old asthmatic?"

"A very _determined_ ten-year-old asthmatic, darling, whom we are trying our very best not to hurt, and--" Buddy pauses to draw in a breath through her teeth. "Juno, my dear, Jet is at _least_ four times your size - I really think it would be best if you--"

" _Ow_."

_"Ha! Take that, asshole, and then you can tell me where my goddamn brother is before I--"_

"...Oh dear," Buddy sighs into the mic. Vespa can picture in her mind exactly the way she's massaging her right temple, careful not to jostle the fall of her hair, and tries not to let her face visibly soften at the image. "I don't have the first idea, I'm afraid, love. My suspicions point to the Outer Rim, but - why do you ask?"

Her mentioning Ransom again douses all the warmth Vespa had built up as effectively a bucket of ice water. "Because _Ransom junior_ over here doesn't understand a single word I'm saying," she growls with a pointed look at the kid, who's gone back to staring wide-eyed out into space. Not that it matters when he can't even tell she's talking about him, especially when she doesn't even know his real _name_. As if this situation needed to be any more frustrating.

Still, Buddy sounds stressed. Doesn't need anything else on her plate. Vespa will handle it herself. Maybe she isn't the thief that she used to be, but she can handle one scrawny little kid. "Doesn't matter - I'll deal with it. I love you."

"I love you too, darling, good--"

 _"I'm warning you, back_ _off_ _, you--!"_

The line goes dead again. Vespa shoves her comms back into a pocket and returns her attention to Ransom, who is now watching intently despite, she's pretty sure, not understanding a single lick of what she's said.

"Outer Rim," she snorts. "Yeah right."

Ransom is way too entitled for that. Even now, Outer Rim planets are poor, war-torn and broken. Thirty years ago they were even worse. The only kids coming off of those planets were scrappy, hungry-eyed orphans, not entitled snobs like Ransom - not unless you were upper crust. That definitely seems more like him. He's probably one of those assholes that was born into money and decided to turn to a life of thievery just for the thrill of it - his real name's probably associated with daddy's trust fund and a whole bunch of board meetings that he didn't feel like turning up for.

Except... the kid in front of her looks a lot more like a hungry-eyed orphan than a spoiled heir-to-be, doesn't he.

Trying to reconcile the Ransom she knows with the scruffy, flighty boy she's looking at threatens to give her a headache, and she can hear him laughing at her for it - but it's stuck-up, sneaky, adult Ransom that she's hearing, not scared and silent kid Ransom, which means it's definitely not real. So she stops trying to make the pieces fit. They're as good as two different people, so she might as well treat them that way.

"Don't suppose you can make it easy for me," she tries - in slightly rusty Standard Rangian, which gets her a small head tilt and a furrowed brow, but not much more. Could be it's closer than Solar, seeing as most Outer Rim languages share a common ancestor somewhere or another, but clearly no dice. She sighs roughly. "Right. Didn't think so. Any chance you'll let me at those controls?"

She gestures towards the console with her knife hand, and he immediately darts towards it, putting himself between it and her and that scalpel between her and him.

"You don't even know where it's taking us," she growls. "You can't get out without going past me anyway!"

She only realises when he flinches and jerks the scalpel further upwards that she'd taken a step closer - raised her voice, too, in her frustration. She takes two steps back. Shakes away the shadow of someone else she doesn't want to think about looming over his shoulder. Then, pointedly, she returns her knife to its sheath, and turns to go slump on one of the two benches that line either side of the pod's entryway.

Well, she backs up. Even with a kid, she's not stupid enough to turn her back on someone with a blade pointed at her.

Ransom seems confused by her moving away, but doesn't waste any more time staring out of the windows - even though he clearly wants to, has to keep dragging his eyes away, which is so _stupid_ and so _unlike Ransom_ it makes her want to grind her teeth just watching. _Never take your eyes off an enemy until they're unconscious or dead_ , she wants to shout - but even if he could understand her, that'd be pointless. If she wanted to hurt him, she would have done it by now anyway, whether he was watching her or not.

He keeps glancing back at her while he scours the controls, though, clearly looking for some kind of navigation system. He's not gonna get far with everything labelled in Solar, but Vespa keeps an eye on him anyway, just in case kid-Ransom is as adept with shuttle controls as adult-Ransom had been with what used to be their communal toaster. Being stuck in an emergency pod with her least favourite crew member is bad enough without the pod also being on _fire_.

The language barrier is something they're gonna have to deal with, obviously, especially if whatever the hell this is ends up being permanent. She has mixed feelings on that option - as much as she hates Ransom, and this kid has shown himself to be infinitely more likeable so far even with the shiv threats, she also didn't sign up for babysitting duty, either. But that doesn't matter right now; however things go, it's in everyone's best interests to figure out what the hell language this kid speaks so that she can try to talk him away from the controls before they crash into an asteroid. They _shouldn't_ , if the autopilot stays engaged, but god knows what he's gonna do to the navigation if she keeps letting him mess with the console.

...She could get him away from it by force, if she wanted. Wouldn't be hard, and she could almost certainly do it without physically hurting him. Only problem with that is she's also almost certain that there's been some kind of trauma recently and probably steadily inflicted on this kid for him to act the way he has been, and she's not gonna be the person to tack on additional physical violence to the list of whatever has made him scared enough of adults to try to set himself adrift in an escape pod on his own.

Which puts them right back to the language thing. If she could get him to speak, her comms could probably at least give her the language, most likely a rough translation too, but given that she's been talking at him ever since the door closed and he hasn't tried to say a word back, she doubts that's happening. She could work her way down the list of installed languages playing a sample phrase out loud, but even without factoring in local dialects and variants the list of options would be in the high hundreds, and she'd probably die of boredom or old age before hitting the right one.

Or... there is a third option. Something she could do that's almost universal, and it'd be so easy, too. All she'd have to do is point to herself and say " _Vespa_ " and the expected response would be obvious, even if he might not give it. A name can be a pretty big hint about where you come from - hell, just take Steel as proof of that; a mythology reference and a building material in Solar screams _Martian_ loud enough to burst an eardrum. So getting the thief's name out of him would be _useful_ here, and it would also be the best time to get that information nice and easily, too, and find out what the hell it is he's hiding. She'd be completely justified.

And yet.

And _fucking_ yet.

The thing is that really, her problem with the guy isn't that she doesn't know his name. That's not the issue. It's that he's _so worried_ about keeping that information a secret. It's suspicious, and it bothers her that he's so determined to keep everyone except Steel in the dark - if Siquliak can face up to his bloodstained past and bear the weight of it, why not him? What could possibly be so important to keep under wraps even in a crew of thieves, assassins and murderers? What she wants to know is his _history,_ not his name, and this kid can't tell her that.

...Besides, it feels wrong. It feels cheap, and sleazy, and sneaky in the way she hates so much about Ransom himself. And all the more because Vespa knows if their roles were reversed and Ransom did the same thing to her, she'd be goddamn furious about it - furious and upset and violated, and even more than that, as much as she hates the guy she doesn't even know if he _would_. He's a creep, but he keeps his nose out of other people's business outside of a job. And she _won't_ be worse than him.

Her thoughts are cut short by the blare of an alarm and pulsing of red warning lights, and when she shakes herself back into focus - _stupid_ , letting her attention lapse like that, _stupid_ \- Ransom has vanished and the _disabled_ _autopilot_ is showing a collision warning with a patch of space debris coming up on their right. _Idiot_ kid.

It takes her five seconds to correct now that he's out of the way, at least. She sets the pod to turn around and start following the _Blanche_ while she's at it, too, which should cut down the time it takes for Buddy to come pick them up once she's finished dealing with Steel. But once that's done, she's left with the new problem on her plate: _where in the goddamn hell is Ransom?_

There are only so many places to hide on a shuttle this small, so it doesn't actually take her long to solve the mystery, though she does have to get down on her hands and knees to get a good look. He's tucked into the narrow storage space behind the console - not much more than a cubby-hole, really - hands over his ears and eyes screwed shut and the rations and supplies that _were_ in there strewn all over the floor. Panic attack? Breathing is completely even, but... _too_ even, maybe, and startlingly quiet even though the alarm obviously spooked him badly. Probably some kind of trauma response triggered by the noise or lights, reminded him of some kind of threat that's been present often enough that he's trained himself to stay quiet even when he's terrified.

Unfortunately, she's no child psychologist, or any kind of trauma counselor. She's trained to deal with adults who've been shot or stabbed or blown up, not scared little kids. Common sense would tell her that trying to pull him out or reach in after him would be a bad idea, especially when that scalpel isn't one of the things visible scattered across the floor around her - she's not risking the kid nicking an artery either accidentally or on purpose. But the doctor in her sees a patient in distress, even if it is somebody she usually hates, and not doing anything about this is gonna drive her up the wall now that she knows about it.

She carefully knocks on the metal panelling outside of the nook, and when that gets no response, grimaces and clears her throat. "Hey, uh, kid - it's okay, y'know, I've fixed it now, not gonna be any more alarms or anything..."

Not even an acknowledgement. Might not be able to hear her at all, either because of his hands over his ears or his brain shutting her out. Could be both. God damn this whole stupid goddamn day, this is so--

She sits back onto her heels and takes a deep breath. Then she figures why not go one further, and sits down completely, only to feel something go _crunch_ underneath her weight. She forces herself to ignore the scuttling of insects in her ears as she reaches down to retrieve what she recognises as a popped-open bag of the hacker's incredibly pungent fish snacks. Why are these in the goddamn escape pod? There should be _actual rations_ in here, not _snack foods_. Honestly, if she didn't trust Buddy's judgement entirely, she'd wonder what the hell she was thinking hiring these morons for a job like this. 

She tosses the bag back to the floor. _Family_ , is what she was thinking. Competent people who have proven that they can be loyal to and effective with another person, so that Buddy knows they have a vested interest in the wellbeing of at least one other member of the group. It's a smart strategy, just like every strategy Buddy comes up with, because her brain is as beautiful as she is and hasn't slowed a bit in all the years they've been apart. Which is why Vespa finds it so frustrating that Buddy can't seem to see what a bad investment Ransom is, what a _risk_ he is, everything that could and has gone wrong because of him. 

...But she knows that's not actually true. Buddy does see the risks, but she's always been an optimist. She has faith in people, or at least in herself. The potential gain from Ransom's skills is worth the potential loss of his betrayal, and she's willing to make that bet. Vespa isn't. The tiniest fraction of a risk of losing Buddy again isn't worth the entire galaxy and every thing and person in it.

It doesn't sit right with her. If Ransom is so _gaga_ over Steel, why were the two of them separated? Why did they act like they couldn't stand each other for the first twenty-four hours after they left Mars? If he's willing to make a nasty break once, he can do it again, and--

She whips her knife around so fast at the noise she barely has time to divert it from carving a chunk out of Ransom's face as he scrambles away and back into the storage space with a gasp of pain and fear that instantly floods Vespa's insides with hot guilt. Shit. She'd been in so far in her own thoughts her instincts had just kicked in automatically, and... god damn it.

There's a smear of blood on her knife, and more spattered across the floor. She hadn't hit anything vital, but definitely at least nicked him. The hacker's salmon snacks are scattered everywhere, the flavour powder mixing with the blood in places and writhing around in a very _not real_ kind of way, but - where's the bag?

That was what she'd heard. The crinkling of the bag as it was picked up - not footsteps or breathing, which she can reluctantly admit is impressive. Stupid thing to do, though, getting so close, and for what? Some disgusting fish snacks that she knows for a fact Ransom thinks are an _'affront to the senses'_? Stupid kid.

A warmness on her skin distracts her from that, though. Looking down, she can see a small red stain starting to soak through her shirt sleeve, about halfway up the back of her forearm. So he had come armed. Maybe not so stupid after all.

She stands and heads towards the wall next to the airlock where the emergency first aid kit is - still keeping one eye on the dark space Ransom had vanished back into as she does, obviously. Pulling back her sleeve shows the wound to be only shallow, but closing it up would probably be a good idea. It's a clean cut, at least - Vespa keeps her equipment sharp and sterile, even if that scalpel has been sharing Ransom's pockets with god knows what since it left her care.

Still. Giving herself stitches is gonna suck. And she knows exactly how much, because this isn't anywhere near the first time she's had to do the exact same thing.

...No point dicking around about it, though. She pulls out painkillers, disinfectant, needle, thread, gauze, and bandages, and has the problem fixed in just a few nasty, painful minutes. Fast fingers, that's what her teachers used to say. Makes for a pretty damn good field medic - as well as a few other things.

They were less complimentary about her interactions with patients, though. The thought springs to mind without her permission, right as she glances up again at the dark entrance of the storage space. 

She sighs. Ransom's wound is probably worse than hers was. She should do something about it. Thing is, she was never very good at soothing patients even when she actually spoke the same language as them and hadn't stabbed them herself.

She's quiet as she makes her way over with the kit - not assassin-quiet, seeing as she doesn't actually want to sneak up on him, but not stomping her boots around either. Kid's probably already spooked enough. She sits down out of striking distance, and cranes her neck down to try to get a proper look, only really making out a tangle of limbs pressed into the back of the space, and the gleam of eyes staring back at her.

"Hey kid," she tries, sticking with Rangian again seeing as it seemed to get more of a reaction than Solar before. "You're hurt, right?"

The only response she gets is a slight shuffling as he tries to wedge himself further into the corner. She can hear the crinkling of the bag he'd taken, too, just slightly.

"Look, I know you're bleeding. I can fix it if you come out. See?" She holds out her bandaged arm for him to see, and thinks that his eyes move to follow, but the rest of him stays stock still. No dice.

Well, whatever. Fine. Not like she's _obligated_ to help him or anything. She lapsed on her doctor's oath almost as soon as she swore it - "do no harm" didn't hold up so well during an intergalactic war. Let him deal with it himself if he's so determined, who cares if it gets infected or he ends up with septicaemia? Not her.

...Buddy would, though. She'd be disappointed in her. Steel would probably whine about it, and the hacker would talk her ear off about one or the other or both. Even Siquliak would probably call it an _unwise thing to leave unchecked_. For pity's _fucking_ sake.

So. If she was a kid in an unfamiliar place, who'd found a safe spot away from the person who just attacked her, and wasn't planning on moving any time soon, what would it take to get her to come out?

...Kind of a moot scenario. She would have killed whoever it was by now. But if she _hadn't_ , somehow...

Well, she'd prefer it if the person was unarmed, for a start. That's doable. She takes all of her visible knives out of their sheathes and slides them away to the far end of the escape pod, staying in plain view of the cubby as she does. There. Not completely unarmed, of course - she still has another four knives tucked into the linings of her boots, but Ransom doesn't need to know that.

"There. Happy? You can come out now," she says, gesturing with her empty hands at her empty holsters, and then picking up the first aid kit to rattle at him. "I can fix it. _Help_. If you come here."

No movement. No reply. She pulls in a deep breath. She's doing this for Buddy. For Buddy. For Buddy.

Buddy, whose name has just flashed up on her comms screen as it chimes and she pulls it out of her pocket. Requesting video link. Vespa picks up the call, holding up the main body of the comms so she can see the small screen.

"Uh, hey Bud. How's everything going over there?" she asks, trying not to sound nervous. Buddy won't be mad at her for messing up, but she'd probably be disappointed. If she can fix this herself, she won't have to risk seeing that look on her face. Like she'd expected better, or even worse, like she... like she's _pitying_ her for having fallen so far, or like she just doesn't know what to say without bringing up the giant mosquito in the room.

"Much better, love, thank you," Buddy smiles, full of all her fluttering charm that still makes Vespa's heart flutter back even now. "I just called to let you know that you can simply sit tight now; we'll be on our way to collect you soon."

Vespa blinks, sitting up slightly and scanning the background of Buddy's call. "You two caught him?"

"Well, he's certainly caught, but the credit is neither mine nor Jet's," Buddy muses. "Rita handled the situation quite adeptly; it was over in seconds."

If anyone other than Buddy had said it, Vespa would have scoffed. _The hacker?_ The only member of the crew with all the combat skills of a tube of burn cream? " _How?_ "

There's a burst of static, and then the hacker's face replaces Buddy's on the screen - hijacked the goddamn call, no respect for anyone's _privacy--_

" _Well_ , since you're askin' - I used my super-secret, super-effective _make-Mistah-Steel-stop-doin'-whatever-dumb-thing-he's-doin'_ technique!"

"She started crying," Buddy clarifies from somewhere off-screen, which doesn't seem to phase the hacker in the least.

"On purpose! Well, mostly on purpose cause it _was_ real upsettin' seein' everyone yellin' and fightin' each other like that but more _importantly_ Mistah Steel _always_ stops whatever dumb thing it is he's doin' if somebody starts cryin' and especially if the person cryin' is _Rita_! And then once I got his attention all I had to do was--"

A second face pushes into frame next to the first, a silk scarf wrapped over one eye as a smaller but still familiar figure practically climbs into the hacker's lap to see the screen. "Rita says I'm a space pirate now! And that we were doing a super important mission to find the cure for all disease or something but I got sprayed with some weird chemical that made me shrink into a kid again and that _you're_ stuck in an escape pod with my boyfriend!"

"You told him the _truth?_ " Vespa asks incredulously, directing her question to the hacker, who beams under the accusation.

"Yuh-huh."

"And he _believed you?_ " 

"Well _of course he did,_ " she says, as if this was a well-known fact of the universe that Vespa should really already know. "I'm his best friend!"

"He doesn't even remember that!"

"Quit talking about me like I'm not here," Steel junior complains, a more familiar petulance bubbling through the ten-year-old hyperactivity. "Besides, it's the only thing that makes sense."

Vespa thinks she resists the urge to send her comms bouncing off the other end of the pod pretty admirably. "How in the hell is _that_ the only thing that makes sense?"

"Rita knows way too many things about me," Steel says with an uncomfortable twist to his mouth as he fidgets with his clothes. "And at first I thought maybe you'd kidnapped me and pulled my eye out, but it doesn't hurt at all, and I know what being on heavy painkillers feels like and this isn't it. Which means it's an old wound, somehow, and the last thing _I_ remember is going to bed with _two_ eyes and also Rita showed me the date--"

"Any idiot could have tampered with a comms date," Vespa mutters.

"Sure, but it doesn't make any _sense_ to do that when you coulda just kept me asleep or tied up," Steel counters, barely pausing for breath. "And Rita has pictures of me!"

That thought does seem to rein him in slightly. Seeing Steel's familiar frown on such a different face - lacking the scars or stubble or crow's feet - is downright uncanny. "I look kinda beat-up, though. And old. And..."

The hacker sets a surprisingly careful hand on Steel's head, which snaps him out of it almost instantaneously as he swipes at her and starts to complain about his hair. 

"That's the thing about Mistah Steel - even a _little_ Mistah Steel," she says over the top of him, "He always figures out the truth eventually, even if you're really sneaky and you try to hide the evidence in the air vents except the air vent gives you a kinda serious disease from when you opened it and you end up in the hospital for a week and almost die, so it's always easier to just tell him the truth before he starts yellin' at ya for exposing the whole building to Martian centurion fever and also almost dyin' on the clock when you shoulda just told him you broke his favourite coffee mug in the first place!"

There's a pause while Vespa tries to process the barrage of words the hacker just fired her way, but in the end she decides it's not worth it. " _What?"_

"I believe the moral of the story is that Juno would not have rested nor trusted us until he discovered the real truth, and so the most expedient route to his co-operation was simply to give him that information outright," Siquliak says, bending almost in half to lean into the frame.

"Yeah, what he said," Steel pipes up, pouting as he gives up on getting the hacker's snack powder out of his hair and zeroes in on the screen again. "Can I see him now? Rita said you don't like me very much but I think I'm technically injured right now, and you're a doctor, so you have to do things when I tell you to, right?"

And so the universe balances again. Little-Ransom might only be half as annoying as his older self, but a ten-year-old Steel is apparently _double_ the strain on her nerves.

She thinks she says something - hard to tell over the feeling of greasy hands on her arms and legs and the echoes of commands long carried-out in her ears. But those people are dead; she'd made sure of that herself. The only person who puppets Vespa Ilkay around any more is Vespa Ilkay, even if she's not so good at following orders half the time.

She looks up to inform Steel of that fact, only to falter when she realises that he's vanished from the screen. All she can see is the hacker as she scampers out into the hall, and a new icon in the lower right of the image. "Did you just _mute me?"_

"Um, Miz Vespa," she wavers out, though to Vespa's mild irritation she sounds more uncomfortable than scared. "I know you don't like Mistah Steel very much - and you don't have to! 'Cause I know he can be real annoyin' sometimes and you wouldn't be anywhere near the first person to wanna kill him after speakin' to him for a minute or sometimes even less but also he ain't in a place where you can be sayin' any kinda mean things to him right now." 

"Are you _kidding_ me?" Vespa asks, incredulous. It's hazy, but she's pretty sure all she'd told him was not to order her around. Steel gets on her nerves no matter what age, seems like, but she reserves serious threats for people old enough to threaten her right back. "Not in a place-- There's hardly anything wrong with him, and I didn't even--"

"Vespa, darling," Buddy interjects, and Vespa sees her hand beckoning for the comms before her face fills the screen, beautiful as ever with her flame-red curls spilling over her face and hazel eyes holding hers gently but firmly. "From what Rita has told me just now, and what Juno has discussed with me himself previously, it seems best that all of us, but the two of us in particular, should be careful to make sure that we do not come across in any way threatening towards him, or else we will end up losing this truce we've come to - and more importantly, risk him shutting down on us completely."

That takes a second to sink in, and Vespa isn't quite sure how to handle the implication that comes with it. "I - what do you mean, threatening?"

"Only that..." Buddy pauses, and the panelling of the hall behind her changes as she appears to move even further away from the others and lowers her voice to a murmur. "It sounds as though Juno's parental situation as a child may not have been too dissimilar to your own, darling. I only mean to say that in the interests of keeping him calm and happy, we as adults should be particularly careful not to remind him of any other adults in his life who have previously caused him harm. I know he can be frustrating, but we must remain gentle with him, no matter what configuration he connects his foot and his mouth in."

Vespa pushes a hand back through her hair and groans, pushing it low in her throat where she can feel a satisfying grate on her vocal chords. She's learning way more personal information about these two idiots today than she'd ever _wanted_ to know. But of course Buddy knows exactly what had upset her. "Right. Sure. I got it."

"Thank you, love. And if he asks anything about his brother, you say that he is still on Mars, and that he is safe - nothing more than that."

"Steel has a brother?" Vespa asks with a frown. He had shouted something like that at one point, hadn't he? But he's never _mentioned_ a brother... maybe they're just not close. 

There's a short silence, and then the screen moves to show the hacker again, looking as sad as Vespa has ever seen her. She didn't think 'sad' was an emotion this weirdo could even process; she usually seems to live her whole life on cloud goddamn nine. "He used to, Miz Vespa. I figured it was best we don't tell him that part."

She grimaces. Just perfect - more personal information that she didn't want to fucking _know_. "Can't argue with that, I guess," she mutters.

Steel looks suspicious and wary when the hacker sits back down again, looking from her to Buddy to the comms and to Siquliak one after the other. Vespa can tell he wants to know what they were talking about, but also that he doesn't feel secure enough in his position to ask - either too smart or too scared for it. Maybe both.

"Thanks for clearin' that up for me, Miz Vespa!" the hacker announces brightly, and it doesn't look like Steel buys the act, but he doesn't push on it either - especially not after she adds, "Why don't we talk to Mistah Ransom now? Do you still wanna talk to him, boss?"

It takes a second for Steel to realise he's the one being spoken to, flicking his eyes around to each of them again. "Uh - I'm - am I 'boss'? I thought... Buddy, was the captain."

"Well _yeah_ , she's the _captain_ , but I've called ya boss for the last twenty years, boss, it'd be weird to switch to somethin' else now. Unless you really want me to in which case I'll think of somethin' even better and cooler to call ya!"

"No, it's... fine, I guess," Steel mumbles. He looks vaguely uncomfortable, frowning down at his knees like that. "Can we get this over with now? I wanna see this stupid guy you said I'm in love with."

"Don't see why this can't wait until we get the pod back to the ship," Vespa grumbles. "Not like you haven't seen him already."

"I mean - I haven't, really," Steel shrugs, picking at the outer seam of his pants. "He kinda woke me up, threw these clothes at me, and dragged me out of the room as soon as I finished changing - I think he was trying to get us both outta here while we still could but I figured you guys had Benten, too, and I couldn't leave without him."

Benten must be the brother; probably best to push away from that topic as fast as possible. "Well, doesn't matter anyway - he's hiding, won't come out. Try again later."

At that, Steel finally looks up, something tight in his expression. "He's hiding?"

"Yeah, he's _hiding_ , you got--?"

She bites off the rest of the sentence, sighs, and drags a hand through her hair. As much as she'd _love_ to tell Steel to clean the swamp mud out of his ears and listen the hell up, it's not gonna be productive. "He's still pretty scared. Mostly of me, probably. I don't think he's coming out any time soon - maybe the rest of you might have more luck."

Steel mumbles something that she can't catch. She tries not to let it rankle her too much, but can't stop herself from growling, "You got something to say, kid?"

"Maybe I do - what do you care?" Steel snaps back, but despite the way the words sound, his posture isn't aggressive or angry, it's - scared. He's bracing his shoulders and ducking his head like he's waiting for something to land, and flinches with his whole body when Siquliak speaks up.

"You are very observant, and have a deductive mind, Juno - it often pays to listen to your thoughts on a problem, as much as anyone else here."

Steel uncurls slightly, enough to stare up at him. There's a whole muddy mess of emotions on his face that mostly boils down to wary disbelief. "It... does?"

"When you are not focusing on nitpicking trivial matters outside of the scope of the problem, yes."

"But--" Steel starts, and then stops just as quickly, looking down at his lap instead. Vespa almost smiles - seeing Steel stunned enough to shut up for once could nearly be worth this whole mess of a day.

"C'mon, boss, what were you gonna say?" the hacker prompts, setting a powder-coated hand on his forearm that makes the whole thing twitch right up to his shoulder. "I bet Miz Vespa wants to know - right, Miz Vespa?"

Vespa scratches at the back of her neck. She's not usually one for audience participation. "Uh - sure. Whatever."

Steel still looks nervous - hell, he probably should be, given the circumstances - but something about having the hacker nearby seems to reassure him. He spends a long moment looking at her before swallowing and turning back to the screen to say, "He might come out if you show him I'm okay. He probably thinks I'm dead or tied up or something."

"That's--" Vespa starts to throw back, but stops partway through. Because as much as she hates to admit it, he's _right._ That might actually do something. She takes the speaker out of her ear and switches her comms to play the call out loud. "...Fine, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't speak any Solar. Knock yourself out."

She reattaches the speaker and leans carefully forward towards the cubby to set her comms down in front of it. She watches him watch her do it, making sure the screen is facing him, and he keeps watching as she moves back again out of reach, not looking away until Steel's half-hushed voice comes out of the speaker to draw his attention.

"Hey, um - what's his name again?"

"He's goin' by _Mistah Ransom_ right now."

"But that's not his name?"

"Well, y'see Mistah Steel, it's this whole super romantic situation where you're the only person here who he trusts with his real name because apparently it's a big dramatic secret or somethin' which is very sweet but on the other hand that means that no-one knows what to call him right now except him."

There's a stretch of silence, and then a quiet, almost angry, "I'm the only one who _knows_?"

"The only one!" the hacker confirms, but there's a strained edge to her perpetually chipper voice that Vespa makes a mental note to follow up on later. When Steel speaks again, Vespa can practically hear him scowling.

"This guy must be pretty stupid."

"Trust me, boss, he ain't - he just loves you a _whoooole_ lot."

"He's _stupid_ ," Steel bites back, "he has to be, I don't wanna talk to him anymore."

"Well that's a shame, Mistah Steel, cause it looks like he wants to talk to you."

The hacker is right. While the two of them had been whispering back and forth, Ransom had decided to come and investigate the noise, and is now cupping the comms in his hands, staring intently down at it. Vespa takes automatic inventory - two small gashes on his cheekbone and upper arm, the former having trickled a wide stream of blood down the left side of his face and onto his collar. It probably looks worse than it is, but they're lucky she hadn't swung the knife half an inch higher, or else they might've had to tally up a third crew member with only one organic eye - and even if you could technically call them pirates, that seems like it'd be going a little far.

"Come _on_ Mistah Steel, say hi!"

"He's not gonna understand me anyway!"

"Of course he will! Don't you know the language of love is universal? That's what _every_ stream says and if every stream says it then--"

"I think a simple wave would suffice to make him feel better that you're alright, darling," Buddy interjects before the hacker can really get going. It's strangely surreal for it to be her voice that cuts through the rambling - more often than not that's Steel's job. "You won't even need to say a word to him at all, or even look at him if you don't want to."

The speaker goes quiet again for a while. Vespa can't see what's going on on the display, but she's guessing that Steel eventually gives in, because after a minute Ransom carefully transfers the comms to just one hand so he can tentatively wave back with the other.

"There, now that wasn't so hard, was it? Excellent job, Juno, I couldn't have done better myself."

"Don't patronise me," Steel grumbles, muffled like his face is pressed into something. Vespa has the urge to tell him to shut his mouth, but considering Buddy's warning she decides she's better off taking her own advice for now.

"Vespa, dear? Jet and I will come out in the Ruby to tow you back in, we won't be long. We'll all be together again in moments, alright?"

It's a transparent reassurance, but it still makes her feel better. Talking to Buddy almost always does. "Of course, Bud. I'll see you soon," she says, voice slightly raised for the comms to catch her, and hears the closing beeps of the line disconnecting.

Ransom is watching her warily, but he hasn't tried to retreat back into the cubby again yet. She moves her hand slowly, pointing to the comms and then to her. "Can I have that back now?"

For a moment, where he pulls the device closer to his chest and holds her gaze, it seems like he won't relinquish it at all. "... _Please,_ " she tries in Rangian, barely resisting rolling her eyes, but it seems to strike a chord. The kid opens his mouth - either out of surprise or to say something back - and though he closes it again almost immediately he slides the comms back across the floor to her with only a few more moments of hesitation.

"Okay. Now are you gonna let me fix those?" she asks, pocketing her comms and gesturing to his arm and face, then her own bandaged arm. He only stares at her, so she picks up the first aid kit again and taps the big green circle on the front of it. "Fix. Heal. Doctor."

That last word earns her a rapid up-and-down assessment and a doubtful look, which would be funny if it wasn't so insulting, or coming from literally anyone else. "Yeah, okay, I know - white coats don't suit me, alright?" she huffs. "Just c'mon."

She takes herself and the kit over to one of the benches and sits down, pointing to the empty space next to her. The kid just watches from his spot by the cubby, chewing his lip uncertainly, so she sighs and opens the kit - might as well get what she needs together while she waits. Ideally, she'd stitch his wounds up the same way as hers, but she doubts he'll let her stick him with a needle any time soon, so butterfly stitches will have to do for now. If he ever gets his ass over here.

Just because she isn't looking at him doesn't mean she isn't keeping track. Even with her working deliberately slowly, it takes him the entire time she's getting set up to make it to the far end of the bench - and even then, he's still only perching on the edge of it, most of his weight still on the balls of his feet. He darts halfway out of his seat when she flicks her eyes up, but when she doesn't make any further moves, he slowly settles back down again.

"I'm not gonna be able to do squat with you all the way over there," she says to him, pointing at the space next to her again. "What do you think I am, a catfish?"

Whether or not he understands that a Rangian catfish would have already constricted him half to death by now, he reluctantly scoots closer. Close enough that she can just about reach what she needs to if she leans over slightly, at least.

"Good," she says, "Now gimme your arm. _Arm_."

After a little gesturing, he works it out. His whole body jumps when she takes hold of it, and he still looks ready to bolt, but at least he keeps still while she pushes up the loose sleeve and checks out the wound, as well as the spot where he'd pulled his cannula out, which is still smeared with dried blood. She swabs a wipe and some antiseptic over that and applies a little gauze and tape before moving on to the larger wound on his upper arm. Thanks to having taken the little hurdle first, he's much calmer by the time she gets to the big stuff - _poor bedside manner_ her ass. She just doesn't see the point in mincing her words.

"This is gonna hurt, alright?" she says, tearing open another sterile wipe to clean the blood away. "Bigger wound, bigger sting. Think you can not be a baby about it?"

Most of that didn't land, she can tell, but he puffs up with a frown at the word 'baby'. The indignance on his face is actually kind of funny.

"Oh, you don't like that?" she snorts. "Keep still and I won't have to call you it."

He hisses in pain when the wipe meets the wound, baring a couple of missing teeth and a whole lot of cavities, but to his credit and her absolute surprise, he doesn't pull away. She can feel the effort it's taking, the shaking in his muscles as he fights himself. That's a hell of a lot of self-control for such a young kid.

Well, the least she can do is make it quick, seeing as he's making it easy for her. And quick by her standards is _damn_ quick, so it's barely any time at all before she's bandaged the arm and is preparing to move onto his face.

"Okay, same deal," she says, pulling another pack of stitches and some more wipes from the box. "Keep still, alright?"

She hadn't been expecting a verbal response, but she still looks up to gauge his reaction, and it gives her pause. He's not actually looking at her - just staring straight ahead, breathing evenly in and out. Except he's still shaking, just enough to be noticeable, and when she turns his wrist over for his pulse, it's racing a mile a minute.

"Kid?" she tries, and when that gets her nowhere, "Uh, Ransom?"

No response at all. Not a good sign. It could be shock, but given the strength of his pulse and the relatively minimal amount of blood loss, she'd sooner guess at some kind of dissociative state - same as before, probably, could be his way of managing stress or pain. Either way, his face can wait - she thinks there must be... no, she _knows_ there are supplies in here for just about everything. She makes sure the whole ship is well-stocked for exactly this reason, and _especially_ the escape pod.

She finds a thermal blanket in one of the overhead bins and drapes it over his shoulders, crouching down in front of him to try to get his attention. Eyes are tracking her, that's good. She can't communicate any counting techniques to help ground him, annoyingly, but she'll just have to improvise. Wouldn't be anywhere near the first time.

He sees her, that's one sense engaged. She reaches out and gently guides his fingers to the smooth, crinkling foil of the blanket; that's another, maybe even two. The stink of the hacker's disgusting snacks has permeated the whole pod by now, but she fishes the bag out of the storage space and pushes it into his lap to try to concentrate the smell, hopefully that makes another.

She finds herself biting back her first aid impulse - _"my name's Vespa, I'm here to help, you're gonna be fine."_ Been years since she's had to give that spiel, but there it is anyway. Instead, she checks his pulse again - slower, and he's shaking less. Good. That's good.

There's not really much else she can do, not wanting to push it any further with patching him up, so she sits back down next to him for the moment. She hopes he pulls it together before Buddy and Siquliak arrive - she's already going to have to explain where the wounds came from, never mind admitting that she'd accidentally set off some kind of trauma response while trying to fix them. She talks about stabbing Ransom a lot, sure, but she wouldn't do it for no _reason_ , and she already feels bad enough about it without everybody looking at her like _that_. Like the crazy, damaged doctor who hurts better than she heals.

"I think I prefer you like this, y'know," she says absently in Solar, more for her sake than his, though having a sound to focus on should help with grounding him, too. "You really bug the hell outta me, usually. I mean, I get not wanting people to know your old name if you don't use it any more, but you don't share _anything_ with anyone except Steel - how am I supposed to trust that? Can't trust somebody you don't even know. Especially when you never even _try_ to defend yourself, you just get him to do it for you! Do you know how goddamn suspicious that makes you look?" She growls to herself - she's riling herself up, but she needs to blow off some steam right now somehow, and it needs to be in a way that's not gonna freak the kid out too much. "I just don't _get it._ For a con artist, you'd think you'd do a better job at making yourself look less goddamn shady."

He's looking at her again, she can feel it. Staring at her, unsure of what she wants from him. Makes a nice change from the usual routine, honestly - normally it feels like they're dancing the opposite roles.

"Doesn't matter, kid," she sighs, waving him off. At least all that effort seems to have calmed him down. "Just talking to myself - seem to do that a lot these days."

It's actually pretty quiet right now, in her head. That, along with the knowledge that Buddy is on her way and everything is currently as under control as possible, are actually a welcome break which she's determined to try to appreciate, letting out a long breath and letting her eyes half-close, if not all the way.

So she's completely unprepared for it when the kid turns to her, points to himself, and produces a series of sounds, which in as heavy an accent as they are take a moment for Vespa to register as a Brahmese variation on an old Earthen name. It's old enough, in fact, to be one of those names that has a variant for almost every language spoken in every human colony across the galaxy, and a name that, if translated into its Solar variant, would come out as--

" _Peter?_ "

The kid's face scrunches up in an expression of offense so uncannily similar to Ransom's when Steel teases him about his cooking skills that it's eerie. " _Pechar,_ " he corrects huffily, which makes Vespa want to laugh until she cries at the irony of it all. Instead, though, she repeats it back to him in an incredulous whisper, stands, walks over to the other bench, and collapses along the length of it.

" _Seriously?_ " she hisses to herself, hands dragging roughly over her face. "What kind of idiot uses their _real goddamn name_ for an alias?"

That can't be _right_. Had it _really_ been his real name this whole time? Maybe not Peter _Ransom_ , or else Steel wouldn't need to think before he speaks, but Peter _something_... but why the hell would you go to the trouble of telling everyone your name is fake and then go ahead and use half of the truth? She hates how much the thought sounds like Steel's voice in her head, but it doesn't make _sense_.

And jesus, _Brahma_. If Ranga was a hellhole thirty years ago, Brahma would have been its twin sister in fire. That laser system they had would have still been in operation back then, kid his age would have grown up underneath it - explains his reaction to the alarm; red lights flashing from above - and would've only gotten a reprieve after--

There's a flash of a connection in her brain that she cuts off before it can fully draw - cuts it _right_ off because she doesn't give a damn about any aspect of Ransom's past that he hasn't _told her himself_. She is not completing that thought right now, not giving this guy a free pass out of telling everyone the goddamn truth; if Ransom wants his history to make a difference to his standing on this crew, he's gonna have to do the unearthing himself, no _way_ is she gonna do the hard work for him.

Besides, she's probably jumping the gun. It would be kind of a leap to actually believe that - that _that_ was really the case here. Not like her brain doesn't do that kind of thing for her all the time, but - and this isn't even--

Well, she's not thinking about it. Nope. Pushing the thought right out of the airlock.

...Damn it, now she's thinking about the airlock. Is it secure? When's the last time they checked the seals on the escape pod? Could they be leaking air, not even knowing it until they both pass out and Buddy arrives to find them both _suffocated--_

She flinches backwards as a cold hand touches her arm, and sees the kid do the exact same thing in response to her sudden movement, tucking himself up tight at one end of the opposite bench while she does the same on her own. It's almost funny, the symmetry of it. It's less funny when her comms beep and the pod suddenly jerks to one side with an enormous _BANG_ that has her leaping out of her seat and pulling a knife from her boot.

A second later, Buddy's voice rings in her ears like a lighthouse shine. "Sorry for the rough arrival, darling, my aim isn't quite what it used to be. Not long now!"

With some effort, Vespa uncurls her fingers from around her knife and tucks it back into her boot with a sigh of relief. "Thanks, Bud. See you in a minute."

Looking around, she's not surprised to see no trace of the kid where she'd left him. Ransom, she means. Except the more she thinks about it, the more she feels weird calling him Ransom, so as of now, she's deciding not to do it. He can be the kid up until they sort this whole mess out.

She finds the same tangle of limbs in the storage space as before, the same gleam of dark eyes staring back at her. "Hey, uh," she starts in Rangian - before realising there's a better option. Brahmese might not be her first or even her second language, but she knows enough of it to get by. Enough to tell the kid, "Everything's fine - it's safe," in an awkward, faltering approximation.

She can practically taste the rustiness of the words in her mouth, but it seems like it's enough; he sits up a little straighter to look at her. "Can you hear me?"

He nods.

"Do you understand me?"

He nods again. Seems a lot more present now, too.

"Can you talk?"

No nod this time. There's a long pause, long enough that she's about to repeat the question, and then a small, scratchy, "Yes."

Vespa feels her own shoulders sag slightly. That's kind of a relief; two-way communication is gonna make this whole thing way easier. "We're not going to hurt you. I tried - have been trying to tell you that."

He watches her steadily. After a second, he asks, "Why didn't you speak Brahmese before?"

"Because I didn't know _you_ spoke it," Vespa growls. "Now are you gonna stay in there all day, or - or come out so I can help?"

"Why did you try to cut me?" he presses, ignoring the question. "Why -" he says something that she doesn't understand, probably a colloquialism, but she thinks she recognises half a word or two in there. Something about _setting,_ or - _bridging_ , maybe.

She lets out a breath. He wants to know why she'd hurt him and then turn around and try to fix it - it's a fair question. "I wasn't..." 

The sentence trails off as she huffs in frustration. She's _okay_ at Brahmese, but she's nowhere near fluent enough for nuance, or even proper specifics. "You scared me. I didn't _want_ to," is what she settles on, eventually. She shifts uncomfortably and glances away for the next part. "Sorry."

"...It's alright," the kid says, after a pause. Then, "Why did you take me? I'm not worth anything. No-one is going to pay you anything for me."

"It's a - story. Long story," she says, tucking away the more concerning implications of what he'd said. "Maybe the - _they_ can explain it to you, if you come out of there."

He squints at her. "Who?"

"The, uh--" She struggles to find the right word, not recalling the phrase for _crew_ or _coworker_ and instead settling on the closest thing she can get. Buddy's word. "Family."

There's a stretch of silence. He's still in shadow, but what she can see of his face is set in an odd look. "...Your family?"

"Mine, and - yours, too, I... guess. Kind of," she says, tacking on the qualifier in Rangian. It's not quite the truth, but it's not _not_ true. Still, his eyes narrow even further.

"Liar."

She bristles up, despite herself. "The hell I am--"

"I don't have any family," he says matter-of-factly, picking at the bandage on his arm. "So you're lying."

She's going to... ignore that first part. Second bit's the important thing here. "Look, it's... hard to... know the right word," she says. "And it's complicated. The point is, we'll be back on the - on our ship, in a second, and if you don't come out of there, you'll be staying in there alone. Do you want that?"

A long silence, and then a tiny shake of the head. She moves back from the entrance, enough to give him some breathing room. "Come out, then. I can fix your face once we're out of here, too."

He emerges one small inch at a time, pushing his too-big glasses up on his face with one hand and clutching that stolen scalpel with the other as he straightens up. Thing's probably covered in god knows what by now, Vespa thinks as she gestures to it, her own blood aside.

"Can I have that back?"

He looks reluctant, which she can understand - more than she'd ever admit. It's comforting to know that you can defend yourself if you need to, especially when everything around you is unfamiliar - but also, she does want her scalpel back. Partially so that she can clean it and put it back in its proper place _not_ in the grubby fingers of a little kid, partially to make herself feel better that he no longer has a weapon to stab her in the back with, but in this situation, she has a feeling she's gonna have to concede the latter to achieve the former.

She sighs and walks over to retrieve her knives from across the room, settling one in particular - small, light, more for utility purposes than dealing any amount of damage - snugly in its sheath as she detaches it from her belt and returns to offer it out handle-first. "Trade you." 

After a wary pause, he reaches out and takes it. He holds it awkwardly, without the practised assassin's grip on the blade that his adult self has, but he looks like he appreciates the beauty of it nonetheless. That earns him some points in her book. And, after another moment of deliberation, he places the scalpel carefully in her outstretched hand, which earns him a few more.

She pockets it for now. The view outside the window starts to brighten as they enter the ship's hangar, floodlights filling up the glass. Not much time to get this one last thing straight.

"Listen," she says, bending slightly to get at his eye level as she points to herself. "Vespa, Ilkay." She turns her finger around and pokes him in the shoulder, a touch emphasising each of her next two words. " _Peter, Ransom._ "

He frowns at her, and opens his mouth to insist, " _Pechar--_ "

" _Peter. Ransom_ ," she repeats before he can finish, even though her common goddamn sense is _screaming_ at her for it. "It's for your own good, alright? Just--" She takes a deep breath and drags a hand over her face. She can't believe she's about to say this. "Trust me."

She's fully prepared for him to tell her to go fuck herself, or simply run away and hide again. Instead, what she gets is a pause while he contemplatively smooths his thumb over the hilt of the knife she'd given him, and then a quiet, "Okay."

She determinedly tries to shrug off the feeling of dread that settles on her shoulders; the certainty that by asking for his trust she's doomed herself into failing it. Not right now. Not now. "I don't know if the others speak any Brahmese, but they won't hurt you, alright? Steel's fine, you saw that."

He cocks his head at her, searching. She's seen Ransom make a similar face, scanning floor plans projected large-scale on the kitchen wall and calculating entry and exit routes. " _'Steel'_ is the other kid you took?"

It's strange to hear him say Steel's name like that - the inflection is all Brahmese, nothing like how Ransom says it. She's starting to realise that almost everything about the thief is a fabrication, crafted to hide something much different underneath. Except, that's not quite right - she'd _known_ that, what's changed is that it's not for the reasons she'd thought. And that... what's underneath might not be what she'd thought, either.

The hangar doors boom shut behind them, reminding her that they're pressed for time. "We didn't _take--_ " she starts, and then shakes her head. Doesn't matter. "Yes, the other kid. He's Martian, so I don't think he'll understand you." She snorts to herself under her breath as she turns to make for the door, switching back to Solar. "Wish it was like that all the time."

When she glances back over at the kid, he looks like someone's just told him his pet marsh rat died. She frowns at him. "What?"

"He's probably angry at me," he tells her quietly - or, to be more accurate, he tells her feet. "I tried to tell him I would come back for him, but..." He bites his lip, expression falling into resignation. "I didn't think he understood anyway."

So that's what he'd said. Vespa had assumed it had been something more along the lines of _"screw you, then,"_ but once again her assumptions about this kid - hell, she'll say it, about _Ransom_ \- are turning out to be wrong, one by one. She's not quite sure how she feels about that. 

"He's not going to be angry at you," she mutters as the ventilation finishes cycling air back into the garage and she reaches for the door lock. "This is going to be loud - don't go running again."

There's a shuddering hiss of air as the doors open and the pod depressurises. Vespa doesn't miss the way the kid - _Peter_ , she might as well call him, but that feels weird, too - shuffles back behind her, putting her between him and the door. He's gripping that little knife so hard it looks like his fingers are gonna cramp.

It's a breath of fresh air when the door opens and she can see Buddy standing there waiting for her - literally and metaphorically. Siquliak is detaching the tow line from the pod off to the side of the door. Gonna be a hell of a lot of work for him to fix this mess; these things are designed for a single, emergency use, so reattaching it to the ship and getting it in order again is gonna be a pain in the ass all round.

She clocks the hacker on the other side of the room, too, and Steel not far away, wearing a hoodie she recognises as belonging to his adult self practically as a dress with his hands stuffed into the pockets. They're having some kind of heated conversation that Vespa very quickly decides she doesn't give a shit about, so she summarily ignores them and hops down from the pod to make a beeline straight for Buddy.

"Are you alright, love?" Buddy asks softly as she gets close, reaching out for her hands - both hands, at first, and then she smiles slightly and drops one so that Vespa still has one free for her knife. The swell of affection Vespa feels for her then almost cancels out the embarrassment that's roiling under her cheeks at the question within the question, at the fact that Buddy knows she's paranoid enough to want that hand free no matter what. Almost, but not quite.

"Fine, bud," she replies quietly, taking her hand and giving it a squeeze. She'll probably want to talk more later, in private, but for now she's saved any further probing as Buddy's eyes flick up and past her to the pod doors.

"I see you got him to come out," she smiles, waving at the small percentage of the kid that's visible, peeking out from just behind the frame. "Any progress on communication?"

Vespa clears her throat, unsure of how much she should say. She hates that she even has to consider putting _Ransom's_ privacy over being honest with Buddy, but - there's principles involved. But then again, there's also practicality.

"Brahmese," she says quietly. "I only know enough to get by, but it's been mostly enough so far."

Buddy looks back at her sharply, her visible eyebrow arched high. "Brahma? Now that _is_ interesting." There's calculations running in her eye as she glances back at the kid, but as she purses her lips they dip under the surface, just a little. "But... I suppose we shouldn't pry into his secrets when he's not able to defend himself, should we?"

"I told him to use the alias he gave us," Vespa admits, which makes Buddy's eyebrow tick up even higher. "I _know,_ I just - like you said, it feels... wrong, getting it out of him like this."

"That's very considerate of you, my love," Buddy tells her with a soft smile and a kiss to the cheek, before stepping past her to address Ransom. "Peter? Would you like to come down here, darling?"

She gestures along with her words, beckoning him down out of the pod. He doesn't go anywhere, which is honestly about what Vespa had expected - what she _hadn't_ expected was that he would redirect his uncertain look to her, as if asking for confirmation. 

She nods, and that seems to be enough. He clambers quickly and near-silently down from the pod to the floor - had enough sense to hide the knife she'd given him, looks like. Buddy smiles one of her more dazzling smiles at him and offers out a hand. "It's good to have you back, Pete. And it's nice to meet you."

The kid looks at her hand, then back up at her, and then to Vespa again, who clears her throat. "Um, Brahma is same as Ranga, Bud - bowing, remember?"

"Oh - my mistake," Buddy says with an airy laugh, straightening to dip her head instead. The kid bobs cautiously back - polite, but not lowering his eyes the way you would with friends or family; you've gotta trust somebody enough to look away from them for that.

"Is Juno coming, Rita?" Buddy calls over to the far side of the hangar, where Steel and the hacker still seem to be at a stalemate.

"Yep!" she calls back, at the same time Steel shouts " _No!_ " - and then they're back to what is looking more and more like haggling the more Vespa watches.

"Well then, I suppose we'll just have to come to you," Buddy declares, a mischievous spark dancing in her eye and at the corner of her mouth as she glances at Vespa, then at the kid, and then starts walking.

Ransom - Peter, _whatever_ \- looks to her for confirmation again. It's _weird_ , it's like - like he's decided she's his _mom_ now, or something. And there's a hell of a lot of words Vespa Ilkay might use to describe herself, but _maternal_ isn't one of them.

At the same time, though, she can't just leave him to wander around and do whatever he wants. He'll probably break something, or walk himself out of an airlock somehow. So as much as she hates playing babysitter, she gestures for him to follow, too. "Just stay with me, understand?"

He's so quiet as they make their way over that you'd almost forget he was there if he wasn't taking up space. Vespa might not even think he was real, if she didn't know better.

Steel and the hacker don't seem to have noticed them coming until they're already within speaking distance, which is about when Steel glances over and immediately pulls his hoodie up over his face with a petulant huff.

" _Mistah Steel,_ " the hacker says, almost scolding, and he pulls it down further.

"I _said_ I don't want to!"

"Well why not!"

"'Cause - 'cause it's _stupid_ , that's why!"

"And I told ya, that doesn't sound like a very good reason to be rude to someone ya ain't never met!"

"I see we're being stubborn," Buddy comments in amusement as she stops walking, and the hacker lets out a dramatic sigh.

"He says he doesn't wanna talk to him, which I know for a fact is a _lie, Mistah Steel._ "

"Is not!"

"Yeah it is, boss - and don't tell me it isn't 'cause I known you way too long not to know that you're dyin' of curiosity right now and you're just bein' stubborn 'cause you don't wanna change your mind in front'a everyone."

 _"That's--_ " Steel starts to squeak, and then clears his throat and huffs out, " _Not._ It."

"Well could you enlighten us as to what _it_ is then, darling?" Buddy asks, in that way that she does that tends to make people feel like they've been stripped down to their underwear in front of a live audience. "Or else I imagine we'll all be standing here for the rest of the day."

Steel puffs up like snake bite without antivenom, and tugs the drawstrings on the hood determinedly closed before turning away. When Vespa turns to check, Ransom looks bewildered, upset, and maybe a little offended. He seems to sense her eyes on him, and briefly flicks her a look of betrayal that communicates something along the lines of: _you promised_.

She shouldn't feel bad about it. She doesn't even _like_ this guy, _or_ kids, or - _anyone_ who isn't Buddy, maybe Siquliak by association.

And yet.

"This is ridiculous," she huffs. "I'm taking Ransom to the medbay to stitch up his face, let me know when detective dipshit makes up his mind."

"His face?" Steel mumbles, finally peeking his head out of the hoodie.

There is, Vespa thinks, maybe half a second of eye contact, and then Steel slaps a hand over his mouth, dashes over to a bucket in the corner and _heaves._

Buddy blinks after him, wide-eyed. The hacker grimaces to herself. Ransom, though - the kid's face is fucking _priceless._

"I shoulda warned him about the blood," the hacker wails, already shooting off after him as Vespa barks out laughing, doubling over with the force of it. She can hear Buddy chuckling with her as Ransom looks back at them both in horror, then back to Steel, who seems to be trying to contain himself to dry heaving.

"Told you he wasn't angry at you," Vespa snorts in shaky Brahmese, slapping a hand against his shoulder to guide him out of the room. "Seems like he just hates looking at your face."

The kid just slips straight out of her grasp to look back at Steel, concern on his face. "Is he okay?"

"He's _fine_ , alright?" Vespa groans with as much of an eye-roll as she dares. "He's just - scared of blood, or something. So the sooner I fix your face, the sooner you can talk to him without him - without _that_ happening."

Ransom doesn't look convinced. He stares after Steel for another long moment before fixing his eyes on her again with surprising intensity. "I _was_ going to come back," he tells her insistently. "Does he know? Can you tell him?"

"I will tell him for you," Siquliak says, approaching from the other end of the hangar with the tow cable draped over his shoulder. Vespa hadn't realised he spoke any Brahmese. "You should go with Vespa, so that she can fix your wound."

Once again, Ransom looks to her for confirmation. It makes her uneasy, being looked at like that. Makes her feel like anything that happens to this kid is gonna be her fault, even if he did something stupid to deserve it.

"Don't know why you're looking at me, kid," she grumbles. "It's your choice."

He looks away, chewing on his lip. His eyes drift from Siquliak, standing imposingly a few feet away, to Buddy, and then the hacker, and finally to Steel. Something in his face seems to settle, and he digs a hand into his pocket.

"I'm coming back," he says to her, and then runs over to the corner where Steel is, stopping short a foot or so out of his line of sight as the hacker pats his back and coos over him. Then he pulls something out of his pocket and sets it on the floor, just where Steel should be able to see it, before running back to her.

"What did you give him?" she asks, frowning. Hard to see from this far away - but suddenly the kid looks very sheepish.

"It looks like one of your scalpels, love," Buddy calls back to her. 

"Are you _kidding me_?" Vespa demands, whirling on Ransom. "You had _two_ of them the whole time?"

"...No. Same one," he mumbles at the floor, cringing. "Sorry."

She stares at him. "You _pickpocketed me?"_

"I--" He cringes harder, one foot sliding backwards like he's preparing to make a break for it. "Sorry."

She clamps a hand down on his shoulder before he can run - but, not _hard_. Just... firm. She also looks him dead in the eyes. "Never do that again."

He nods, swallows. It's exactly the kind of shit-scared, guilty expression she'd _love_ to see on an adult Ransom's face, but here it just makes her feel... well, _mean_. She lets go of him.

"C'mon," she sighs, turning and gesturing for him to follow. "The sooner your face is fixed, the sooner I can get back to work figuring all this out."

She pauses after a few steps, and turns back to him to fix him with a hard stare. "And kid?"

He looks nervously back at her, all wide-eyed expression and no filter. For once, it feels like she can see right through him. "Yes?"

"Keep your _hands_ to _yourself_."

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!! I had a lot of fun with this one - if you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a kudos & a comment for me to enjoy too!
> 
> WARNINGS:  
> \- Canon-typical internalised ableism  
> \- Depictions of children in dangerous situations, accidental violence against a child  
> \- References to Benzaiten's death, specifically  
> \- Mentions of blood and injury  
> \- References to child abuse, neglect, and homelessness  
> \- Some unreality wrt vespa's hallucinations  
> \- Description of a dissociative episode (outside perspective)  
> \- Implied vomiting (not really but kind of)  
> \- One anxiety/paranoia spiral - it gets cut off fairly quickly, but it's still there  
> If you notice any warnings I may have missed, please let me know!
> 
> ❤
> 
> Edit: for people asking about a continuation, it may happen! I want to do at least a little more work on my guardian angel ben fic first, but maybe after that 💕


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